Search form

"'While Pen, Ink & Paper Can Be Had': Reading and Writing in a Time of Revolution"
by Mary Kelley

Instead of the typical focus on the famed trio of Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin, this lecture looks at the American Revolution through the eyes of two relatively unknown individuals. A son and a daughter of families who counted themselves members of Boston’s elite, William Tudor, who served in the Continental Army, and Delia Jarvis, a Loyalist whom he was courting, forged their relationship in a world of divisive turmoil and radical change. A remarkably rich transatlantic literary culture that remained intact in an increasingly embattled world served as their vehicle. This program will explore not only the letters and the lives of Tudor and Jarvis, but also the fiction and poetry on which these individuals relied as they navigated their way through the momentous events of the struggle for independence.

Mary Kelley is the Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books including: Learning to Stand and Speak; Women. Education, and Public Life; Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America; Woman's Being, Woman's Place: Female Identity and Vocation in American History; and The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere which she jointly authored with Jeanne Boydston and Anne Margolis. She co-wrote and edited with Robert A. Gross An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation which was Volume II of the AAS sponsored series the History of the Book in America. She is also the editor of the following critical editions: The Portable Margaret Fuller; The Power of Her Sympathy: The Autobiography and Journal of Catharine Maria Sedgwick; and Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Mary Kelley is the AAS/Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence for the 2013-14 academic year.